Dear Marie Claire, I'm Mad At You.

I never intended to use this blog as a platform to air my feelings. I always had the mindset to keep this strictly for lingerie, interviews and other fantastic lingerie-related style finds. But the issue I'm writing about today relates to my Twitter feed—my personal brand. It's where a lot of my relationships with other lingerie bloggers & fans have started and are ongoing, which is one of the reasons why I decided to post this here.

Wednesday night, Treacle (The Lingerie Addict) let me know that one of my tweets was printed in the April 2011 issue of Marie Claire. My initial reaction was excitement, because let's face it—mere mortals having their words printed in a major ladies mag is exciting!

But I couldn't imagine what they were publishing. I didn't renew my subscription after the Mike and Molly fiasco on their blog and the last Tweet mentioning MC that I could remember was back in October. Quick scan of my own feed found this one in February:

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Sarcasm wholly intended. A horoscope in February that tells a lingerie blogger to "go lingerie shopping"? I know, I know, not all Cancers are lingerie bloggers, it's easy to convince women to buy pretty little underthings to prepare for Valentine's day, blah blah blah. But my Twitter bio includes the fun fact that I'm a lingerie blogger. So ya read the tweet, read the bio, ha ha, it's funny!

Well, I saw the printed version today and I'm pretty mad. I'm also annoyed and think that the person who made the ridiculous decision to edit other people's tweets is an idiot. This is what I found in the issue today:

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Original:

e5thelove: my @marieclaire horoscope for feb told me to "go lingerie shopping". thanks for the tip. 

MC's print: 

E5TheLove: My @marieclaire horoscope for February told me to go lingerie shopping. Thanks for the tip!

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. NO. NO NO.

Two major issues:

1. My username is e5thelove, NOT E5TheLove. It's a spin on my OWN name, Esther, and my birth date, 5. e5thelove. The '5' is the s. It's not lowercase for 'TheLove'. Quite frankly, I shouldn't even have to explain the origin of my username because that's exactly what it is - MY username. Why did an MC staffer feel the need to give it meaning? I leave @marieclaire as it is, you don't see me futzing with it. e5thelove is MY own personal brand, it's me and a username I use on multiple platforms. My friends, readers and followers know me as @e5thelove, all lower case. Don't change my brand.

2. Don't edit other people's tweets unless there is a way to find the original. Sometimes when I retweet others, I end up cutting it short because of the character limit. But that's on Twitter, not in a magazine, and there's always a way to go back to the original tweet and read it in entirety. However, MC decided to PRINT tweets, without a way to go directly to the original, and made the decision to edit them. The punctuation edits changed the tone of my tweet, and it misrepresented my voice online. And you know what? I'm really not cool with that. My tone & writing style is what has attracted a lot of my readers, and it's part of my brand's identity. So again: don't change my brand.

If anyone at all from Marie Claire cares to respond, I'd love to hear why you edited my tweet that is still live, and changed my username to mean something it doesn't. Maybe other tweeters don't care, but I do. I'd love to hear your side. Leave me a comment here or e-mail me. 

Thank you to my little blog's followers and fans for being patient with me through this post. I've worked really hard for all of this, and I just couldn't let it slide. Love you guys.

xoxo,

Esther